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Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, says he’d “like to see Republicans step up on education more” if they win the majority back in November.

“We could do a lot better job on oversight,” Alexander told POLITICO in an interview for the video series “The Politics of America’s Youth.” “We did a poor job on oversight when we had the majority before. And one area of oversight, for me, is in higher education. I think higher education is over-regulated. I think there are too many bosses in Washington telling Nashville Diesel College and Harvard University how to run their campuses. And I’d like to reduce the number of Washington regulations on higher education.”

“Second,” he said, “I’d like for Republicans to adopt as a part of our agenda that when we say job growth and lower taxes, we also say, better schools, more research and a strong system of colleges and universities. That’s as important to job growth in America as lower taxes.”

Alexander, one of the most outspoken Republicans on education, was U.S. Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush, and was president of the University of Tennessee. He’s the son of a teacher and an elementary school principal.

“When George W. Bush came into office, he focused on No Child Left Behind, and ... suddenly, Republicans were thought of as being as interested and as competent in education as Democrats,” Alexander recalled.

“And why? Because they were talking about it and doing something about it. So, that’s why I think we Republicans should be focusing on not just how we make schools better, because that’s more in the province of local government, but how about our higher education system? How about research and development for better energy or for other kinds of things? Those should be Republican ideas because they create a growth economy.”

“Arne Duncan — and the president, because he appointed him — are doing a good job on elementary and secondary education by focusing on rewarding outstanding teaching in school leaders,” Alexander said. “That means tying teacher performance to student achievement. That’s hard to do.

“But they’re sticking their neck out on it, and on charter schools and on higher standards. And they’re challenging people within their own political party in doing that. So, I give them credit for that. ... There’s the phrase, ‘Nixon to China’ — that he could probably do that more easily as a Republican than a Democratic president. Well, I think President Obama and Arne Duncan can make these kinds of changes more easily perhaps than a Republican president.”

But Alexander criticized what he has referred to as the administration’s “Soviet-style takeover of the student loan system.”

“We’re heading toward that collective, central, European-Soviet higher education model, and they are headed in our way, because their model didn’t work,” he said.

One of Alexander’s sure-fire applause lines is to “put history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools.”

“It’s taught behind math, science, English, history,” he said. “If you don’t help kids learn what it means to be an American, there’s really no rationale for a public school. Everybody can just go to private schools, and we can give the money to them, let them choose among the schools.”